In the beginning of my record collecting in the early 1960s
– as a member of the Concert Hall Record Club, or Musical Masterpiece
Society, as it was also called – I came across a couple of records
with the Canadian couple Pierrette Alarie and Leopold Simoneau.
It was a Mozart LP with concert arias – two each – and four
operatic duets. Recorded around 1960 it featured the noted German-British
Walter Goehr as conductor. Both singers immediately became great
favourites, Ms Alarie through her crystal-clear and fluent light
soprano, her husband through his stylish nuanced singing, flexible
technique and beautiful tone. Shortly afterwards I received
a complete Carmen, recorded in Paris with French forces
under Pierre-Michel Le Conte. Here my newly found favourites
were joined by the Spanish mezzo-soprano Consuelo Rubio in the
title role and the warm and expressive Swiss bass-baritone Heinz
Rehfuss as Escamillo. Those records were among those I frequently
returned to. A couple of years ago I had a 3 CD box for review
with Pierrette Alarie and Leopold Simoneau, including, besides
some arias and songs a historic Oedipus Rex by Stravinsky
and Bach’s b minor mass (where Heinz Rehfuss also took part)
the Mozart record I referred to above. The transfers were not
the best but the singing just as superb as I remembered it from
almost fifty years back. When the review was published I got
a mail from Denis Alarie, whose father and Pierrette Alarie
were cousins, and he reported that the soprano, approaching
90, was still in good health and he also had some correspondence
concerning suitable further issues with the two singers. I suggested
the complete Carmen, mentioning that my old LP-set was
in stereo – incidentally my first – and was told that the stereo
version was very rare. Just some months ago I got hold of a
CD-version – in stereo! – and very happy about that I contacted
Mr Alarie. He had already heard it and was satisfied with the
transfer, which I also was. I then got to know that there was
a new issue with Pierrette and Leopold singing Mozart arias.
I was sent it for review, together with the present Vivaldi/Mozart
coupling, and now I have finally found time to listen to both.

A far too long introduction to the review, maybe but it puts
the issue in some perspective, I hope. Recorded in 1952 by Ducretet-Thomson
the technical quality leaves something to be desired. It is
a rough-and-ready sound, limited in frequency range and presented
in a rather flat recording. But that is something it has in
common with many issues from the same period. The early LPs
were not naturally better than the 78s from a couple of years
earlier. There is no disturbing distortion, as was the case
with the Mozart record I mentioned above and one gets a fairly
good picture of what it must have sounded like in the studio,
There is no mentioning of the recording venue.

The choral singing in Gloria is straightforward and not
very sophisticated but it is full of life and Vivaldi’s music
is so very much alive. A present-day recording would probably
have employed a smaller vocal group, singing with lighter touch
and more nuances. The producer of that recording would also
have hired a period instrument orchestra of modest dimensions,
which had further lightened the textures of this likeable score.
André Jouve was probably not a specialist in baroque practice,
but it was common 50–60 years ago to play Bach and Handel and
Vivaldi – insofar as he was played at all – in big band versions.
My first recording of Bach’s orchestral suites Nos. 2 and 3
was with a full-size radio symphony orchestra. On the other
hand my early Brandenburg concerto No 3 was much closer to today’s
ideas, played by Boyd Neel and his chamber orchestra. I think
we’ll have to regard the present recording as a document of
a performance style long ago passé. It still has its
pleasures, primarily in the solo singing. The contralto Marie-Therese
Cahn is heavier than any present day singer would be in this
music, but her voice is agreeable and admirably steady. When
we come to Pierrette Alarie – and she is the main reason for
issuing this disc – we hear truly classy singing. All the characteristics
of her singing on my old LPs are there: the lightness, the clarity,
the technical assurance and the beauty of tone. Maybe it’s the
recording that makes her sound thinner than I have been used
to, but it is a winning reading and my only regret is that she
has so comparatively little to sing.

When we come to Exsultate, jubilate, written in Milan
by a 17-year-old Mozart for the castrato Venanzio
Rauzzini, we are in a different world altogether. Mozart
was more André Jouve’s cup of tea and the music is so wonderfully
crafted for the high human voice. Pierrette had her greatest
successes in Mozart and in French repertoire and here she is
on tremendous form. The opening aria has forward movement and
brilliance and the concluding Alleluia all the dazzling
fireworks one anticipates. Few singers have sounded better in
this music, unless it be Mattiwilda Dobbs on another Concert
Hall record from my early years. But the crowning glory of this
motet is not the admittedly glorious outer movements but the
short recitativo Tandem advenit, followed by the breathtakingly
beautiful Tu virginum corona. Pierrette Alarie’s reading
is ethereal, weightless and divine. For me the motet, and in
particular this aria is more than worth the price of the disc.
By all means give the Gloria a listen, keeping in mind
that this is a product of a bygone era; but for a deeply satisfying
musical-religious experience Tu virginum corona (You,
crown of virgins) is music for the desert island – in particular
in Pierrette Alarie’s rendering.

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